


A Rag Doll Dance

by Sinope



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Arkham Asylum, F/F, Female Character of Color, Misses Clause Challenge, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 02:36:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2796539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinope/pseuds/Sinope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>You hear laughter cracking through the walls.  It sends you spinning; you have no choice.</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Following the footsteps of a rag doll dance, we are entranced -- spellbound.</i>
</p><p>Ten stops on the journey that takes Fish to Arkham, leads her out by unexpected means, and shows her who she was destined to become.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Rag Doll Dance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crookedspoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/gifts).



1.

A girl walks into a bar.

She's an artful, grungy mess — raccoon eyes, bottle-black hair, fishnet tights already beginning to run — and she walks into Fish's club like a sullen teenager on her way to detention. But her full, sensual lips hint at coy wickedness, and Fish has done more with less.

"What's your name?" Fish asks, when the girl approaches her on her way to the stage.

"Elizabeth Frances Quinlan,” she says, in a bored tone. "My friends call me Harley, after my ride."

“That's a very big ride for a small thing like you," Fish says, one eyebrow cocked.

The girl shrugs. "It was my dad’s. Took it when he died.“

"Well, you'll have to ditch it for this job. And the name. I think I'll call you Liza — much less memorable."

"Whatever you say, Miss M."

The girl walks up on stage and starts singing her piece, a languorous rendition of Siouxie and the Banshees. Her eyes stay fixed on Fish even when her voice wavers, as if she's so caught up in their connection that singing has become secondary to gazing.

When the girl stops, Fish nearly smiles with approval. "What's your name?"

The girl hesitates, but not for long. "Liza."  


* * *

  
2.

Fish only takes Liza to bed once. She brings the girl into her bedroom and tells her to strip. Liza does, with only the slightest hesitation.

“What do you want me to do?” she asks, once she’s standing nude and pale before Fish.

Fish smiles and pulls off her own shoes. “Nothing but enjoy yourself. If you service Falcone with the skills of a whore, he won’t trust it. But he _will_ be pleased if you seem to like his fumbling touches. Men like Falcone always think they’re better in bed than they are."

“So you’re teaching me to fake an orgasm? Wouldn’t be my first time.”

“No, my darling girl,” Fish says, and she allows a thrill desire to darken her gaze and deepen her voice. “I’m going to give you a night so intense that you won’t have to fake a thing when you remember it.”

Then she steps forward and cups one hand around Liza’s breast, where the skin is pale as bone and smooth as a ripe apricot, and she brushes her thumb across her flesh, teasing around her aureola and flickering whisper-quick over her pert nipple. Liza’s eyelashes flutter shut; she lets out a soft gasp and arches further into Fish’s touch.

Fish allows herself a smile, anticipating the moment when she’ll pinch that sensitive bud hard, just to watch Liza’s betrayal war with her arousal. Tonight may be about Liza’s pleasure, but Fish is far too much the hedonist to deny her own in the process.  


* * *

  
3.

When Liza bursts into Fish’s nightclub, she’s disheveled for all the wrong reasons; the rain has matted her hair and set her mascara dripping in long black streaks like a harlequin doll. “He knows,” she gasps, then falls into the closest chair.

Fish notes, with some pleasure, that even in her frantic state, Liza avoids dripping the dirty rain onto Fish’s dress. “Shhh,” she soothes, but her voice is firm. “Tell me what he knows, and why.”

“I didn’t — it’s that awful man Cobblepot. He found out about me somehow, that I was working for you, and I overheard him talking to Falcone when they didn’t know I was home.” Her brows suddenly furrow, and she looks up with a puzzled look. “But I thought the Penguin was working for Moroni. Why would he tell Falcone?”

Fish bites back a curse. “Because it seems that the two have been working together all along. That ain’t good for either of us.”

“So what are we gonna do?”

Her brain’s already buzzing ahead, calculating her next move, deciphering how the chess pieces have changed positions. But Fish has always taken care of her own, and little Liza stayed faithful to the end. “I’ll take care of myself. But you’ve gotta get out of here. Falcone won’t go easy on you once he finds you, I can tell you that now. She pauses, then beckons over Butch with the crook of a finger. “I need you to get Liza here out of town. Not just a train ticket — new ID, new papers, the works. Twenty grand should help her land on her feet.” Then she turns back to Liza. “Now you need to go and do exactly what Butch tells you. You pick a new name for yourself, and find yourself a new place to live, and don’t talk to anyone who knew you before. Then you don’t come back to Gotham until I tell you it’s safe. Got it?”

Liza nods, still trembling like a spring sapling. “Will I see you again?”

“Of course you will, baby. I won’t forget about you. You just be good for mama, okay?”

“Okay,” Liza echoes. But as she gets up to leave, she leans toward Fish and places a kiss on her lips: chaste, hesitant, all the things that their first kiss wasn’t.

Then she leaves, and Fish is left stroking her own lips with one fingertip, feeling where Liza’s touch still tingles like a ghost.  


* * *

  
4.

Everything has gone wrong, and Fish doesn’t want to be doing this here, but like her momma always says, you gotta play the cards the Devil dealt you.

God, _momma_. She tried to keep her momma away from all this, but here she is in this shadowy warehouse — hanging there, tied up like a dog, above a vat of Wayne Enterprises’ finest corrosive chemicals, glaring the way she does when she’s too furious to be scared.

Right now, Fish can relate to that feeling.

She pulls her chin up and marches up to the Penguin, wishing she could carve that smug little smile right off his face. ( _Momma._ ) “Let’s make two things clear,” she says, voice tight. “First, if you ever threaten my blood again, I won’t kill you. Oh no. I’ll slice off your skin, one inch at a time, and stuff it down to your throat until you choke on your own blood. And then I’ll start the real pain.”

Cobblepot’s smile twitches for a moment, but it doesn’t leave his face.

“Second, there ain’t a lot of rules in this town, but you just broke the biggest one. You’d best be prepared to kiss a lot of shoes, if you ever want anyone in Gotham to deal with you again.” One corner of her mouth curves up. “Now. Name your terms.”

His obsequious grin widens. “Come now, I haven’t done anything yet. But you wouldn’t _listen_ to me, and I really do not like being ignored. Not any more. So I had to catch your attention a little — that’s all. It’s about the Bowery.”

“What about the Bowery?”

“I want it. I’ve been looking at real estate, trying to decide where to make my home, and the Bowery’s what I want. I’m thinking of building a nightclub — something classy,” he adds in an unsubtle dig.

Fish feels herself gaping unattractively, then hears Butch speak up from behind her. “You can’t just claim a whole neighborhood! We’ve spent years setting up the right networks there.”

Cobblepot’s expression narrows, and his eyes never part from Fish’s own. “I think you’re soon going to discover that I can do whatever. I. want.” Then he pulls out a pistol and shoots Butch in the head.

Fish can feel the warm spatter of blood on her face, but her hand doesn’t tremble as she yanks her own gun out of her purse and points it at Cobblepot. “Who the _fuck_ do you think you are,” she starts to yell, and that’s when the second gunshot rings out.

Cobblepot drops his gun with a scream, blood pulsing out from his wrist, and when Fish turns to see the source, Jim Fucking Gordon is staring them down, trigger finger ready for another round. “Gotham Police,” he shouts, and, “everyone drop your weapons!”

But there’s another sound in the room, an odd tight hissing sound coming from behind, from the chemical vat that her momma’s dangling above. She whirls around and has a split second to register that the vat is leaking out of the hole made by Gordon’s bullet, a high-pressure jet of chemical-green sludge, before it registers that the liquid is spraying onto her own face.

Then she doesn’t register anything but searing pain.  


* * *

  
5.

Nobody comes to visit Fish in the hospital. On her optimistic days, she considers this a good sign; if anyone wanted her dead, they’d have had ample opportunities. The PD claim they’ve got her momma in protective custody, at a comfortable safe house; she doubts that they’re all that concerned about the comfort of Fish Mooney’s kin, but can’t press the issue anyway.

There’s not much she _can_ do, stuck in her antiseptic ward, besides plot how she’ll make her revenge — on Cobblepot, on Gordon, on everyone. She will burn this city to ash.

So with everything else she’s lost — Butch, her turf, her reputation — she can’t find the energy to react much when the nurses show her the damage that the chemicals did to her skin. The corrosive spray had doused her face, melting off her hair and bleaching the skin a blotchy corpse gray. Where the hair’s beginning to grow back, it comes out wrong, poison green — something about mutated follicles, the doctors explain. The worst damage is where the spray hit her directly, a slash of scarred red tissue from her cheekbone to her lips, as if extending her lips into a gruesome grin on one side.

But Fish survives. She always does.

When she leaves the hospital, she heads for Falcone. He’s not a man known for pity, but perhaps she can market herself as a viable investment, damaged but promising.

He laughs in her face.

“Miss Mooney, you’ve been plotting my death for years; I find it very amusing that you never thought I was aware. I merely kept you around because you brought in money. But now, now you look like a syphilitic prostitute, and I suspect you’ll have a hard time persuading anyone to consider your propositions.” The derisive smile fades from his face. “You were always a pawn; now you are no longer a profitable one.”

The words cut, they burn even deeper than the chemicals, but giving up is not in Fish’s toolbelt. She turns on one heel, marches out, and goes to sell her secrets to Moroni.

When she finds the man and pleads her case, he grins like she’s hilarious. “You’ve gotta be kidding. I’ve got people on the inside, people that Falcone actually talks to.”

“I can be valuable to you,” she retorts, keeping her voice quiet but piercing.

Moroni just snorts in amusement. ”Please. It’s time to realize that you were never gonna make it. I mean, ‘Fish'? What kind of name is that for a dame? You're a joke, lady, and everybody but you knows it."

The words echo in her ears for days. _You're a joke, Fish, and everybody but you knows it._  


* * *

  
6.

She dredges up all her remaining resources and tries one last stand, one spectacular scheme, to show them all that she’s still a player.

But Fate’s apparently still a bitch who has it out for her, because everything turns to shit. Police evacuate all the _creme de la creme_ from the Wayne Enterprises gala before anyone’s pretty face gets permanently scarred, and the evidence she’d planted on Cobblepot falls through, and she ends up being clapped into handcuffs by Jim Gordon, whose expression can’t seem to decide between guilt and disgust.

When the judge rules to send her to Arkham instead of the penitentiary, all Fish can do is laugh and laugh and laugh.  


* * *

  
7.

The worst part of Arkham is the noise. Most of the other women in Fish’s unit keep to themselves well enough; little Ivy whispers to the plants she grows in her narrow windowsill, and “Mime” Ortin is as silent as her namesake. But all it takes is one Magpie down the hall, screeching all night about her precious shinies, to undermine Fish’s sorely needed beauty sleep.

(But she’s still beautiful now, oh yes — more beautiful than ever before. Her lips have never been more red.)

If only for that reason, she looks forward to the weekly visits to her psychotherapist, held on a different floor that is blessedly quiet. On days when she’s going crazy from the confinement (an irony, yes), she can close her eyes and drink in the tranquil peace. On days when she’s feeling particularly vicious, she can make a game out of it — figure out how many words it takes to ferret out the therapist’s own secrets and twist them into a gleaming-sharp weapon.

After all, when one is alone, without outside allies or hope of parole, one must have one’s amusements.  


* * *

  
8.

Fish has been rotting away in Arkham for almost eight years when the guards bring her to a new office for therapy. This one has a newly taped sign on the door, proclaiming in neat all-caps, _DR. QUINZEL._ “What, did Sofen finally decide to leave for a better salary?” Fish asks, a small smile curling her lips. Everyone had a mortal sin, and she’d quickly realized that Dr. Sofen’s was greed.

“None o’ your business,” the orderly grunts. He knocks on the door, then pushes it open without waiting for a response. Inside, a young blonde woman sets down her notebook to look up at the visitors — and suddenly Fish is speechless, because it’s Liza. Sure, she looks different; her thick-rimmed glasses and neat blouse give her a professional, bookish air, and those eight years have replaced some of her girlish airs with the lushness of a mature woman. But it’s Liza, no doubt.

The guard elbows Fish in the back while she’s busy being struck silent, pushing her into the room. “The new doc’s been warned about your tricks, so don’t try nothin’ or you’ll get it.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Fish demures, walking toward the patient’s seat in a near daze. Eight years. She’d forgotten the tangled flush of emotions around people who knew her from Before.

But she gathers her wits about her, seats herself, and nods for the orderly to leave. Soon the room is silent — just the two of them, like it was so long ago.

“Can we —“ she starts to ask, then falters.

Liza nods. “No bugs or mics. I checked. Guess all those reforms about patient rights mean they haveta give you a little privacy.” She holds up a small buzzer. “This’ll call them in if I don’t feel safe.” Then she tosses the buzzer onto a side table, and moves to the chair right next to Fish’s own, close enough to touch. “So how’re you doin’, mama?”

“I’ve had better times,” she says, and almost laughs at the absurdity of the statement. “But what in God’s name are you doing here, child?”

“Can’t you tell?” Liza’s eyes are full of confidence and trust, the kind of trust that Fish desperately wanted but never actually thought she’d earned. “I’m here to rescue you.”  


* * *

  
9.

They don’t escape that first day; after eight years, Fish can wait a couple of weeks to make sure that everything’s in place. So while all the contingency plans fall into place, they spend their sessions talking.

Liza tells her about how she made it here — how she’s been Harley Quinzel for nearly a decade, even though the bike’s long gone. She tells how she used the money that Fish gave her to start on a college degree. “I wanted to help you out, the way you helped me, but I didn’t know how. Somebody like me wasn’t ever gonna get the connections to make them let you go, and they keep an eye on everyone here, even the cafeteria ladies. Then I realized that there was still one way I could get to be alone with you.” She glances away, looking nostalgic and amused. “At Metropolitan University, they said I had a gift for psychology, for watching someone and figuring out how they ticked. I couldn’t tell them I learned it all from you.”

“Oh, my sweet child,” Fish says, pleased beyond measure that there’s still one person in the world who thinks she’s not a joke. She reaches out, takes Harley’s hand, and strokes one thumb over her soft palm. “We’ll rule this city, you and me.”

Harley shivers, blushing faintly, and Fish’s smile curves into something more predatory.

“Still think you only like boys?”

Her blush deepens. “You ruined me for them. I tried, but none of ‘em knew how to touch me like you did.”

“Mmmm,” Fish agrees. She leans forward and notes how Harley flinches, just barely, before tilting her head up for a kiss. “I ain’t as pretty as I used to be.”

Harley shrugs, brushing her lips over Fish’s cheek, where Fish knows the shiny scar tissue still forms a grotesque grin. “Beautiful enough for me.”

Then Fish slides her hand up Harley’s thigh, to the point where silky stockings become silkier skin, and words don’t seem so important any more.  


* * *

  
10.

They escape together, under the dim light of a waning moon, and Fish has never tasted anything as sweet as her first breath of freedom — even if the breeze carries the rank odor of toxic waste and industrial smog. They make their way to Fish’s most secret safe house, the one that nobody but herself knew about, and fall onto each other as soon as they’re inside, high on freedom and the thrill of a job perfectly executed.

This was the simpler part, Fish knows. Getting out of Arkham ain’t easy, but it’s nothing compared to the war currently being fought in Gotham’s streets. She’s heard the rumors from new inmates — Falcone and the Penguin have forged a tenuous truce and fortified their strongholds, but more and more upstarts are trying to claw out their own piece of the pie. Worse still, they say there’s a vigilante on the streets — someone who can’t be bought, someone with superhuman powers and a vendetta against corruption. “The Bat,” they call him, but nobody’s sure whether it’s because he flies out of the darkness or because he’s a blunt weapon, never discriminating between one rival boss and another.

Long story short, it’s not an easy time to be gathering power in Gotham. If Fish were interested in playing the same old game as before, she might be in trouble.

Fortunately, she’s not.

The men that rule this city called her a joke, but the real joke is on them. She’ll gather her resources, renew her connections, dig up long-hidden stashes, and then she’ll strike. All of them — Falcone, Cobblepot, Gordon, Wayne Enterprises, everyone who made her what she is — she’ll make them laugh, laugh until they choke, laugh until they’re dizzy and gasping for breath, laugh until they’re doubled over with tears streaming from their eyes. They’ll laugh, and they’ll sob, and they’ll die.

Harley gave her a fresh chance, but she’ll grab it with both hands and dig in her claws; they’ll have to rip the fingernails from her flesh to stop her any more. Liza vanished eight years ago, and Fish will vanish tonight. She’ll twist around their words and call herself the Joker, and she’ll give them a joke that they’ll never forget.

The joke goes something like this.

A man walks into a bar. Maybe it’s a crowbar to the head. Maybe it’s a pole of rebar through his fucking chest. And the bartender screams, because he thought that man was the one thing he couldn’t live without, and now there’s a spray of blood where a person used to be. And the punchline —

— well, they’ll figure that out when they get there.

**Author's Note:**

> The lyrics in the fic summary are from "Spellbound," the Siouxie and the Banshees song that Liza sings in her audition for Fish.
> 
> Obviously I took many liberties with the backstories of the Joker and Harley Quinn; this was my attempt at imagining how they might spring out of the Gotham universe, not at replicating comics canon. I hope you've enjoyed reading, lovely recipient mine! Many thanks to K. for beta help.


End file.
